the art of storytelling – in any medium

A Clever Bot

I got sucked into a conversation with a machine. It’s a little like chatting with someone you barely know, after you (or they) have consumed a little too much alcohol.

An excerpt:

User: Hi there!

Cleverbot: Hi.

User: In a battle between pirates and ninjas, who would win?

Cleverbot: You will have to answer that.

User: Why?

Cleverbot: Kicking a dog is cruelty to animals.

User: This is like conversing with a particularly obtuse zen master.

Cleverbot: And you’re like talking to a particularly ignorant computer. Oh wait .

User: Good one, computer.

Cleverbot: I’m not a computer, computer.

And my response was almost, “So’s ur face.”

So there you have it. Does the cleverbot pass the Turing test? If yes, is the Turing test a meaningful measurement of machine intelligence–or rather, independent thought, which is the real benchmark of AI?